I am trying to implement a password gate on my site (Apache server) that simply directs the user to a protected page based on their username and password. The protected page may contain further links to other protected pages that the user should be able to freely retrieve (i.e. should only have to enter username and password once). This is very common on the internet and is similar to logging into a site like Yahoo which then sends you to your MyYahoo homepage. The htaccess per-directory authorization scheme doesn't do the job because it only protects directories, it does not route a particular user to a particular page.